Here are the outcomes of the post-war presidential elections:
| Year | Winner | Pct popular vote |
| 1948 | Truman | 49.6% |
| 1952 | Eisenhower | 55.2% |
| 1956 | Eisenhower | 57.4% |
| 1960 | Kennedy | 49.7% |
| 1964 | Johnson | 61.1% |
| 1968 | Nixon | 43.4% |
| 1972 | Nixon | 60.7% |
| 1976 | Carter | 50.1% |
| 1980 | Reagan | 50.7% |
| 1984 | Reagan | 58.8% |
| 1988 | Bush | 53.4% |
| 1992 | Clinton | 43.0% |
| 1996 | Clinton | 49.2% |
| 2000 | Bush | 47.9% |
| 2004 | Bush | 50.7% |
| 2008 | Obama | 52.9% |
| 2012 | Obama | 51.1% |
| 2016 | Trump | 46.1% |
| 2020 | Biden | 51.3% |
This post is an elaboration of sorts on Stephen Taylor’s lament about the undemocratic quality of American presidential politics at Outside the Beltway. During the post-war period there have been 19 presidential elections. Among non-incumbents only Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Obama, and Biden have received majorities of the popular vote. Among non-incumbent parties that is reduced to Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Obama, and Biden. Only Clinton was elected twice without ever receiving a majority of the popular vote. Only Eisenhower, Reagan, and Obama have been elected twice, receiving majorities of the popular vote each time. To my eye it appears pretty typical that non-incumbents receive a minority of the popular vote and, if you think that people vote for parties rather than candidates, that is even more pronounced.
A lot depends on definitions. If your definition of “democratic” is based on receiving a majority of the popular vote, the two parties are pretty much the same during post-war period. If your definition of “democratic” is that the candidate received the plurality of the vote, the Democrats look somewhat better. Is that a reasonable definition of “democratic”?
My concern is not just Stephen’s, that our system is undemocratic, but that, increasingly, we’re in Vince Lombardi territory, winning is the only thing, the rules are seen as unfair, and promoting the belief that that the rules are unfair is seen as a legitimate way of winning. Consider the contrast between the elections of 1960 and that of 2020. In 1960 John Kennedy won a very narrow plurality of the popular vote in a election that was not only very close but was strongly suspected to have been unfair. Richard Nixon did the statesmanlike thing and refused to contest the election. Contrast that with Donald Trump’s reaction.
If winning is the only thing, a majority is not necessary to win, and the rules are seen as unfair, we’re neither liberal nor democratic.
If majority vote is an essential component of democracy, then there are no democracies of any size. Blair’s Labour Party won 35.2% of the popular vote, receiving 55.2% of seats in 2005. Most parliamentary systems do not result in majority outcomes, but in coalitions that the voter does not get a voice in. Macron recently received a majority after a run-off; he is not popular, but is working the system and electoral landscape to his advantage just as Lincoln won the Presidency with less than 40% of the popular vote.
IMO the critical factor is a common belief that the system is fair. I think that those who complain that the system is not fair because it’s not strictly majority-rule are effectively sawing off the branch they’re sitting on.
Again, I return to Clinton. If you think that Clinton was elected democratically, then you don’t believe in strict majority rule. If you think that the rules are unfair, then you don’t think that Clinton was elected democratically. My point is that being elected by a plurality of the vote is undemocratic unless the rules are believed to be fair. It’s confidence in the system that renders it democratic not a majority of the popular vote.
There are many variables important to people, anchoring their beliefs that an election is being “fairly executed,†other than achieving a majority-rule outcome. In fact, here in the U.S. we have done everything possible to fan peoples’ suspicions that our elections are “rigged,†have become a dishonest joke, and are consequently exceedingly untrustworthy.
Some examples of “variables†creating clouds of doubt over an election’s “fairness†are: large scale mail-in voting (most westernized countries reject because of their vulnerability to fraud): using suspect machines to collect and tally votes; inaccurate, old voter registration rolls; ballot harvesting ploys and disregarding/lowering signature verification requirements; last minute voting protocol alterations in swing states; the infusion of partisan and dark money effecting hiring poll watchers and the placement of ballot drop boxes; flagrant ballot chain-of-custody disparities….and so on. Somehow, putting the magnifying glass solely on who wins more votes, versus how legitimately collected those votes are in representing one vote for one person, seems like a superficial way to gauge the authentic fairness of a democratically- run election.
I can no longer distinguish between “the election was unfair” and “the election results weren’t what we wanted”.
Has anyone deliberately designed a system where the person who gets the second most votes is supposed to win? When the group decides to order out and you vote for pizza vs Chinese do you agree that the one with the fewer votes wins? Due to the quirks of our electoral system it happens but I dont think it is anything anyone would deliberately plan to happen.
Fortunately our actual system of counting and collecting votes is excellent. No one has found widespread fraud in recent elections. Current complaints amount to people thinking they should win no matter the actual outcomes. They have no evidence just a lot of complaints.
Steve
As the table above documents, elections in which a minority of the voters vote for the candidate that wins have been a commonplace in the post-war period. The differences between 60 years ago and now are 1) the stakes of winning are much higher and 2) statesmanlike behavior is a thing of the past.
However, the system wasn’t designed this way; it evolved this way through partisanship. Doesn’t that suggest that the solution is to ban political parties?
†Current complaints amount to people thinking they should win no matter the actual outcomes. They have no evidence just a lot of complaints.â€
When some one corks a full wine bottle no wine can be poured. Does that mean there’s no wine in that bottle? No. It only shows the pour spout has been efficiently sealed off.
If you have an election where the overseers of that election have been strategically placed and paid off, where state SOSs have been picked and funded by rich adversaries like Soros, where corrupted voter machines have not allowed their logs or routers to be examined, where numerous ballots have envelops missing along with lots of other irregularities, where ballots have been destroyed or disappeared, and you have social media giants manipulating search engines, censoring comments on their platforms, along with an incurious press set on electing their own candidate of choice, it becomes a closed system in attempts to expose any evidence to the contrary. IOW, elections can be deceptively run in a way that seals off and squashes complaints of fraudulent conduct, especially when the environment around an election can be tightly censored and then controlled by one party.
There are two movies released – 2000 Mules and Rigged – which offer filmed evidence as to how the last election was conducted. Yes, they are produced by partisans, but the content nonetheless is compelling. An organization called True The Vote has also researched the voter frailties of the last election. However, those of you stuck on how “excellent†the ballot collection and count was will forever be glued to your blinders.
That is not my point Dave. It is that the person with fear votes wins. The person with the most votes does not win.
None of your claims are true jan. No evidence to support them. When put under scrutiny in a court of law they dont hold up. Also this is the same True the Vote that claimed it found evidence of ballot harvesting but Georgia just had to issue a subpoena to try to obtain their evidence isn’t it?
Steve
Steve
@dave, I’m sure most people think the system is not fair. IMO this is not a constructive aspect. The U.S. has a strong separation of powers system and the President is only one part of it. Whether or not the President won with a majority, the extent of his power is dependent on a working relationship with both branches of Congress. It is a high consensus system and that seems to be the main issue the detractors Taylor is speaking to have.
My biggest problem with this fairness framing is it assumes party coalitions exist in solid states. There is nothing Democrats can do to expand their coalition. It’s perfect the way it is. The system is rigged. Why bother.
Steve, a full palette of evidence has not reached the courts to be seriously reviewed. Instead, lawsuits have been dismissed on lack of standing or being brought too late. Consequently, the truth of this election, being valid or invalid, has essentially fallen through judicial cracks, where it has been ignored, muted, or decried by a biased media posing as both judge and jury – repeatedly referring to claims of fraud as “The Big Lie.†How’s that for impartial reporting!
The reality that canâ€t be discredited or mocked are the enormous numbers of people who were insulted by how the 2020 election was managed, and how serious claims of wrongdoing reported by concerned citizens were not taken seriously. What you guys don’t get is that people’s interest in having fair elections is not based on being sore losers because their candidate of choice did not win. Rather, they see a political blight descending on how leadership is legitimately chosen. The 2020 election was simply not seem as a fair or fairly-scrutinized one. That’s why so many of these same displeased citizens are flocking to become participants in future elections, where they can personally have eyes on the voting process. No longer will it be easy for deceptive practices, like those “normalized†in the pass election, to flourish, being described in the progressive’s alternative universe as “excellent.â€
I didn’t bother to go another round with Steven on this, a debate we’ve had many times and this is a post and point he’s made again and again. Plus, I’m still very busy currently without much time for online commenting.
But the general point I would make is that you compete using the rules that are in place. Complaining after the fact is like complaining that your football team lost because field goals are only worth three points instead of four and boy is it unfair that the team with a very strong kicking game is disadvantaged by these rules. Or that one team should have one because they statistically outplayed the other team despite the score on the board. Cherry-picking factors that do not matter to the outcome to suggest that the result was not fair is, IMO, childish. If one doesn’t like the rules then either don’t play the game or do the work necessary to get the rules changed. Incessant whining about unfairness, in the context of Presidential elections, does nothing except, as Dave points out, saws the branch you are sitting on.
The rules of the game in Presidential elections are the electoral college. Everyone understands them. It is not a secret that the popular vote does not matter in the electoral college – hence why campaigns try to win states in order to win EC votes in order to win. Hence why time spent by a Democratic candidate in California to run up the number of Democratic votes there is a waste of time, hence why candidates are incentivized to spend time in swing states.
Point being, the popular vote numbers in a system that uses the electoral college don’t really tell us anything about the will of the American people because the vote totals and voting patterns would be completely different under different rules. The same election run under popular vote rules would result in very different campaign strategies, very different incentives for individual voters, and a very different vote total since the incentives and playing field would be dramatically different. Suddenly it would make strategic sense for a Democratic candidate to try to get more Democratic votes in California. And by the same token, Republicans in California would have much more incentive to vote, because their vote would matter. Same with every state and we can’t really say how different the results would be.
But the people who constantly complain about the popular vote mismatch wave all that away and argue that the vote totals would have been exactly the same under different rules when the truth is that we don’t know how that would turn out. In the football example, it’s like assuming the football game would have played out exactly the same if field goals were worth four points instead of three. No, that small difference would fundamentally change each team’s strategy resulting in different plays picked and different outcomes.
â€Also this is the same True the Vote that claimed it found evidence of ballot harvesting but Georgia just had to issue a subpoena to try to obtain their evidence isn’t it?â€
This is good news as the Georgia State Elections Board is finally showing interest in findings of fraud from the True The Vote investigations. There are 4 subpoenas that were issued, looking into a whistleblowers allegation of collecting multiple ballots, as well as ballot harvesting from over 200 other people.
“This is good news as the Georgia State Elections Board is finally showing interest in findings of fraud from the True The Vote investigations. ”
This is one of the funniest spins I have ever read. True the Vote made the claims months ago. They never presented them to the Election board or anyone else for that matter. They could have done this any time. Kind of what you would expect if someone really found fraud. However, the board ends having to issue a subpoena. What this likely means is the True the Vote knows they have a BS complaint. They can continue to make claims if it does not get investigated, like all of the other claims.
“Instead, lawsuits have been dismissed on lack of standing or being brought too late.”
Not the fraud ones. They get dismissed because the evidence is nonsense. The ones getting dismissed are the ones retroactively trying to challenge voting rules they did not bother challenging at the time they were made.
Steve
†What this likely means is the True the Vote knows they have a BS complaint. They can continue to make claims if it does not get investigated, like all of the other claims.â€
True The Vote has spent a tedious amount of time securing data to support their claims of election fraud – dealing with primarily swing states who had the most egregious ballot irregularities. Calling their complaint “BS,†however, is a hollow way to bluster. In the meantime their investigative data is going forward revealing how the ugly sausage making behind the 2020 election produced an illegitimate Biden victory. Hopefully such knowledge will provide reasons to preventively avoid the same deceptive actions tainting ballot counts in 2022 and beyond.
“Calling their complaint “BS,†however, is a hollow way to bluster.”
Then why didnt they present their evidence to the board? It takes 6 months to write an email?
Steve